Do you really need T9 – or in the case of the T-Mobile Dash xT9 – when you have a phone/PDA that sports a full thumb-keyboard? I say “no”. Problem is that on my Dash, xT9 was already turned on. With a “normal” phone, you can change text input modes by pressing and/or holding the * or # key. I tried that with the Dash but to no avail: that switched between cAPS lOCK and NumLock. Would living with xT9 be so bad? Yeah, in my opinion: with it I have to watch the screen and press space or “select” to accept a word: it makes typing awkward and slow…

A quick look online reports that you can switch between xT9 and alphabet mode by tapping ALT + SPACE – whoo! Score!